PPC blog

Representatives from PPC Broadband will join experts from across the international telecommunications and media industry at the ANGA COM Exhibition and Conference which takes place in Cologne, Germany,12 June through 14 June, 2018.

Organised by the Association of German Cable Operators (ANGA), this year's event has attracted a record 500 exhibitors, bringing together network operators, content providers, vendors and service providers from 36 countries.

The survey shares the opinions of 1,500 members of the global telecoms industry - spanning North America, Europe, South America, Asia/Pacific, Africa and the Middle East - and explores key issues and trends affecting the sector including areas of growth, focuses of investment and biggest threats.

We're recapping the key takeaways from the survey, which include the rapid developments in technology, importance of ultra broadband, growing popularity of video services and crucial issues around cyber security.

Fiber-optic broadband is changing lives around the globe - whether it’s enabling people to work and study remotely, the rise of more clever and connected gadgets, increased demand for digital storage methods, or the simple pleasure of streaming Ultra HD TV.

In this blog post, we look back over some of the highlights within the fiber industry over the past year, with a roundup of news, developments and innovations from around the globe.

The continuing evolution of the internet, and the ever-increasing consumer demand for quality, capacity and speed, means broadband service providers and operators need to be continually looking for ways to improve the customer experience.

In this blog, we provide a roundup of the latest news, innovations and achievements in the provision of fixed and mobile broadband from around the world.

The global broadband market is becoming increasingly mobile. According to data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), mobile broadband subscriptions have grown more than 20 percent annually in the last five years, and 4.3 billion people worldwide are expected to be using mobile broadband at the end of 2017. According to the OECD, mobile broadband penetration was at 99 percent across the 35 countries they represent at the end of last year.

In our digitally connected world, consumers increasingly require high speed broadband in their homes, whether for leisure, work, education or keeping in contact with friends and family. This means that when they are looking to move, particularly in the countryside, the presence and speed of internet connectivity is one of the factors that they take into account when buying a house.

No wonder that US research for the FTTH Council Americas found that having a fiber broadband connection increased property prices by 3.1% - the equivalent of adding a new fireplace or half of a new bathroom. Those properties with 1 Gbps connections sold for an average of 7% more than those with broadband of 25 Mbps or lower.

In the UK, property websites all now include broadband speeds, and newspaper property supplements highlight rural areas where fiber is being installed as potential hotspots that will see an increase in value. While much of this is fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) connectivity, there are a growing number of independent companies offering full fiber to the home (FTTH) services, ranging from local co-operatives and community groups to new operators.

Rolling out FTTH across the country, not just within major cities is delivering benefits in four main areas:

One of the questions asked about fiber to the home (FTTH) networks is simple – what are the applications that will need the high capacity and speed that they offer? And how can operators increase revenues around FTTH by providing new services that will differentiate them from their competitors?

Most people have heard of Moore’s Law, which broadly states that the number of transistors on a silicon chip will double every two years, with a corresponding increase in computing performance. This has proved true over the 50 plus years' life of the Law, contributing to huge improvements in technology, regarding speed, size, and cost.

A lesser known theory is Nielsen’s Law, which applies similar thinking to network speeds. First quantified by Jakob Nielsen in 1998, it states that the bandwidth available to high-end broadband connections will grow by 50 per cent every year, leading to a 57x compound growth in capacity in a decade. The fact that it still holds true over 15 years later shows the strength of the model.

Let’s face it - the telecoms industry doesn’t have the best of reputations when it comes to customer satisfaction.

But something seems to be changing. Two years ago my husband and I came back to our home in Cambridge from two weeks in France to find our (and our neighbors') internet connection had been severed. However, what would normally be classed as a disaster has actually been a blessing in disguise, as our old lines were replaced by fiber to the home (FTTH) connections. Personally, as a freelance journalist I rely heavily on the internet, as does my husband and neighbors – not to mention the meltdowns that happen amongst our teenage children if they can’t get online.

But in the last 12 months, there have been no fevered meetings outside our front doors, no anguished dash to a cafe with laptop underarm. As a lay consumer, things have only improved. And surveys across Europe are showing this is not an isolated experience.

Recent research shows that FTTH customers are more than twice as happy with their service as DSL consumers. Not only that – FTTH subscribers are more likely to be thinking of upgrading in the next 12 months and to consider that their connectivity will increase the value of their home.

So FTTH customers like – even love - what they have – and are prepared to pay more for it. The Holy Grail of telecoms satisfaction may have been discovered.

On both sides of the Atlantic, we are seeing a growing buildout of metro fiber networks, as well as a consolidation of national fiber, which will provide the future backbone for applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities.

In the US, AT&T, Google, and Zayo have taken the lead whereas in the UK, BT Openreach is the clear front-runner - albeit with a fiber to the cabinet (FTTC), rather than fiber to the home (FTTH) approach. Zayo has also acquired the Geo, Neo, and the Viatel networks, giving it a strong European network centered on the UK, especially with the fiber assets in the London underground sewer network, working in partnership with Thames Water.